First Treatment

It is done. We weren't exactly sure what to expect. We'd seen the room with all the recliners, and televisions hanging from the ceiling, and people with their intravenous hook-ups, and the nurses' station, but we didn't really "know" what to expect. Will she get nauseated and throw up? Will I need to bring the car close to the entrance and help her get in? Will she turn purple? Sprout warts? Grow extra limbs?

None of those things happened. She sat back in her recliner, they hooked her up, and for the next two hours we watched a short instructional video, read a little, drank some water/coffee, listened to some country music over the earphones connected to the tv; and talked, queried and had a few laughs with the nurses. Well, I did most of those things, Lois slept through most of it.

In a "pre-chemo" cocktail, she received (intravenously) zantax, benadryl and I forgot the third one. These are to help her body receive the main cancer killing drug, paclitaxel (taxol). This is the drug discovered in 1971 in the bark, and later the needles, of Yew trees. Yews are coniferous trees that do not grow in our desert. There are plenty of them on the Olympic Peninsula where we used to live. We had one on the high school campus in Sequim, and our friends Jenny and Dave H., in Sequim, have one growing beside their deck. (Jenny is the lady mentioned previously in this blog who is a breast cancer survivor. We visited with them after church when we went to Sequim.)

We know a little more about what to expect now: any associated nausea will probably take place later today, or tomorrow (we have some expensive drugs to counter it); the fatigue usually happens somewhere about the second day; she will lose some appetite, so eat about six small snacks a day (stay away from the three big meals per day, and stay away from spicy, greasy food). By next weekend, she'll be feeling better and we go back for the second treatment on Monday. I guess the roller coaster has pulled away.

That's it for today. I'll post more as more happens.

Hope it's cooler where you are than it is here. 106 so far.

Jim


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We did tell you we babysit overnight, right? Here are Maia, Izaiah, and Aiden (hiding somewhere on the right side). Note two things: what they are watching, and the condition of the floor. Click the pic for a larger image.




And here's Maia Rose: she's "all business," however, since she's still a bit short of her first perm, we call her the "wild woman." It's all in the hair-do.